Senior Software Engineer, Newsroom AI Products

The Wall Street Journal newsroom is seeking a self-propelled full-stack engineer to help build the future of an AI-empowered newsroom. Reporting to the Head of Newsroom AI and Data, this individual-contributor role sits within the newsroom and works at the intersection of engineering, product, audience and journalism. This is in an in-person role based in New York, NY. We are unable to provide visa sponsorship for this position. All applicants must be authorized to work in the United States.

You will bring deep technical expertise in software development and generative AI, paired with strong product intuition and an understanding of newsroom culture and editorial standards. This role is ideal for someone who enjoys building and deploying new tools, is comfortable operating with ambiguity and is motivated by helping journalists do their best work. For example, you will often start with a vague editorial problem (e.g., 'Help us summarize 1,000 pages of court documents') and be expected to design the prompt strategy, build the prototype and iterate with reporters.

You will be an evangelist for responsible, high-quality AI use—ensuring brand safety, editorial integrity and reader trust – while partnering closely with teams across engineering, product and the newsroom to design, prototype and ship AI-powered tools for both journalists and readers.

Key areas of focus include building experimental, reader-facing products that meet evolving audience needs; integrating generative AI into publishing, editing and distribution workflows; creating scalable tools that support reporting, research and newsroom operations; and identifying common needs across teams to develop flexible solutions that can be adopted broadly across the newsroom.

• Build from zero:  Move quickly from idea to MVP, gather feedback from newsroom partners and iterate based on real-world use. Design, prototype, build and maintain AI-powered newsroom and audience-facing tools.

• Speak the language of the newsroom: Work directly with journalists to understand pain points and translate them into technical solutions. Translate editorial standards into reliable prompts and system instructions; evaluate and refine outputs for accuracy and fairness.

• Iterative engineering: Develop evaluation frameworks and quality checks to ensure outputs are production-ready. Analyze data from experiments to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement.

• Work independently: We value autonomy. You should be comfortable architecting solutions with minimal documentation and vague starting points. Write clear documentation to support adoption and long-term maintenance of tools.
   

• Full-stack prototyping: 

  • At least 2 years of experience shipping production software or AI systems.

  • Experience building and deploying tools used by end users, ideally in content, media, or information-driven products.

  • Experience building modern web applications using JavaScript/TypeScript and contemporary frontend frameworks (e.g., React, Next.js, or similar).

  • Experience designing and consuming APIs to connect backend services with frontend applications.

  • Familiarity with cloud functions, Docker and quick-deploy frameworks for internal tools.

  • Proficiency in Python, AWS, Git and experience working with LLM APIs and modern AI tooling.

• Advanced prompt engineering:

  • Building complex chains, evaluating outputs or bias and accuracy, managing context windows.

• Data wrangling:

  • Comfortable with dirty data – parsing messy PDFs, cleaning OCR text, combining various data from various sources to get the job done.

• Editorial sensibility: 

  • Strong empathy for journalists and an understanding of newsroom workflows

  • Experience working in or closely with a newsroom, media organization, or journalistic workflow is strongly preferred

• Comprehensive Healthcare Plans

• Paid Time Off

• Retirement Plans

• Comprehensive Insurance Plans

• Lifestyle programs & Wellness Resources

• Education Benefits

• Family Care Benefits & Caregiving Support

• Commuter Transit Program

• Subscription Discounts

• Employee Referral Program

Learn more about all our US benefits

Equal Opportunity Employer

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status or any other protected characteristic under applicable law. EEO/Disabled/Vets

Reasonable Accommodation

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We’re committed to offering competitive and flexible compensation to attract top talent. This pay range reflects our good faith estimate for the role and may vary based on a candidate’s experience, skills, location, and other relevant factors.

For bonus-eligible roles, targets are determined based on multiple considerations, including market benchmarks and individual contributions.

For benefits-eligible roles, we offer a comprehensive and competitive benefits package covering health, retirement, wellbeing, and more, along with optional benefits to meet the diverse needs of our employees.